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emThe 'Turtle' and the 'Dreamboat' /em is the first detailed account of the race for long-distance flight records between the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy less than fourteen months after World War II. The flights were risky and unprecedented. Each service intended to demonstrate its offensive capabilities during the dawning nuclear age, a time when America was realigning its military structure and preparing to create a new armed service-the United States Air Force. The first week of October 1946 saw the conclusion of both record-breaking, nonstop flights by the military fliers. The first aircraft, a two-engine U.S. Navy P2V Neptune patrol plane nicknamed the emTruculent Turtle/em, flew more than eleven thousand miles from Perth, Western Australia, to Columbus, Ohio. The emTurtle/em carried four war-honed pilots and a young kangaroo as a passenger. The second plane, a four-engine U.S. Army B-29 Superfortress bomber dubbed the emPacusan Dreamboat/em, flew nearly ten thousand miles from Honolulu to Cairo via the Arctic. Although presented as a friendly rivalry, the two flights were anything but collegial. These military missions were meant to capture public opinion and establish aviation leadership within the coming Department of Defense. Both audacious flights above oceans, deserts, mountains, and icecaps helped to shape the future of worldwide commercial aviation, greatly reducing the length and costs of international routes. Jim Leeke provides an account of the remarkable and record-breaking flights that forever changed aviation.

Jim Leeke tells the little-known history of Grover Cleveland Alexander and fellow athletes in the 342nd Field Artillery Regiment during the Great War.

Many sports fans and pundits believed that baseball died during the summer of 1918. Nearly all minor leagues folded, one after another. Both major leagues quit early, complying with a federal \"work-or-fight\" order that required draft-eligible men either to find war-related jobs or to serve in the armed forces. Here, Leeke discusses how a military-industrial complex saved Bay Area baseball during World War I.

The U.S. Navy's first two-ocean war was the Spanish-American War of 1898. A war that was global in scope, with the decisive naval battles of war at Manila Bay and Santiago de Cuba separated by two months and over ten thousand miles. During these battles in this quick, modern war, America s New Steel Navy came of age. While the American commanders sailed to war with a technologically advanced fleet, it was the lessons they had learned from Adm. David Farragut in the Civil War that prepared them for victory over the Spaniards. This history of the U.S. Navy s operations in the war provides some memorable portraits of the colorful officers who decided the outcome of these battles: Shang Dewey in the Philippines and Fighting Bob Evans off southern Cuba; Jack Philip conning the Texas and Constructor Hobson scuttling the Merrimac; Clark of the Oregon pushing his battleship around South America; and Adm. William Sampson and Commodore Scott Schley ending their careers in controversy. These officers sailed into battle with a navy of middle-aged lieutenants and overworked bluejackets, along with green naval militiamen. They were accompanied by numerous onboard correspondents, who documented the war.In addition to descriptions of the men who fought or witnessed the pivotal battles on the American side, the book offers sympathetic portraits of several Spanish officers, the Dons for whom American sailors held little personal enmity. Admirals Patricio Montojo and Pasqual Cervera, doomed to sacrifice their forces for the pride of a dying empire, receive particular attention. The first study of the Spanish-American War to be published in many years, this book takes a journalistic approach to the subject, making the conflict and the people involved relevant to today s readers. This work details a war in which victory was determined as much by leadership as by the technology of the American Steel Navy.

With American troops fighting in France during World War I, the minor leagues collapsed while the major leagues limped toward an early conclusion. Shipyard and steel-mill teams, in contrast, flourished in what were widely called \"paint and putty\" leagues. Every section of the country saw good industrial baseball. The Northeast and Atlantic Seaboard had three leagues, the Northwest and West Coast a total of four, the Great Lakes two, and the Gulf Coast one. A pair of small leagues scattered across remote Southwestern mining towns plus one league in the Midwest brought the total to thirteen circuits, comprising seventy-four teams altogether.

Harry s. truman ascended to the presidency in april 1945 following the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt. The former vice president then ended the war in August by ordering the use of the atomic bomb, a weapon he hadn’t known existed until becoming commander in chief. Now in late autumn, he was dealing with the difficult issues of peace. The Dreamboat landed at National Airport the same day Truman announced several changes in the top echelon of America’s armed forces during a regular weekly news conference at the White House. Two changes were especially noteworthy: General of the Army and

The aries left guildford airport in western australia at seven o’clock on Monday morning, September 23, with the afternoon Perth Daily News noting its departure on the front page. The famous Lancaster was bound for Melbourne and then home to England. The Americans remained. Commander Davies accompanied U.S. vice consul Rudolph Hefti later that day to call on Lord Mayor Joseph Totterdell. Navy technicians from the r5d meanwhile got busy overhauling the Truculent Turtle’s engines. If all went smoothly, they figured the plane might leave for Seattle on Wednesday or Thursday. Davies said reporters would learn the departure time at

All fourteen pilots, navigators, and crewmen on the Dreamboat and the Truculent Turtle were all-stars. Each needed to be top-notch, given the scale and audacity of the flights they were about to attempt. Mainstream newspapers made no mention, however, of the absence of an African American among the two crews. aaf units were still segregated in 1946, and the navy would not have its first Black aviator until 1948. All four fliers on the Neptune had flown Catalinas long distances over water during the war, often during nighttime patrols. Each certainly recognized the hazards of flying over the vast Pacific.

The truculent turtle flew homeward through another long day, its two engines “scarcely missing a beat.”¹ The flight over the North Pacific Ocean was so routine and uneventful the pilots barely mentioned it later. They switched from visual to instrument flying about two hundred miles west of North America. The Neptune neared Northern California after nightfall on Monday, September 30, after its second day aloft. The West Coast was on Pacific standard time, sixteen hours behind Perth, having switched from daylight savings time on Sunday. Approaching the coast, the Turtle slowed in a rainstorm that would soak the Bay Area

Aviation experts first speculated about airways over the Arctic soon after World War I, although dirigibles figured into their predictions as much as the flimsy biplanes of the day. A National Geographic writer in 1922 compared the frozen Arctic Ocean to an impassable Mediterranean Sea separating continents. “In the near future it will not only become passable,” he wrote, “but will become a favorite air route between the continents, at least at certain seasons—safer, more comfortable, and consisting of much shorter ‘hops’ than any other air route that lies across the oceans that separate the present-day centers of population.”¹